On Effort & Dreams: Eve L. Ewing in Conversation at the Creative Independent

At the Creative Independent, Jessica Hopper initiates a conversation with poet, scholar, and activist Eve L. Ewing about success and the importance of effort and persistence. Their discussion begins with a nod to Ewing's many creative endeavors and an inquiry into how she just gets started. Hopper asks, "When something sows itself as a seed of inspiration in your mind, do you think 'Oh, that would be a great poem,' or do you consider what’s the best way you can express it?" Let's pick up with Ewing's response from there: 

Usually the idea wants to be something based on the nature of the idea. When that doesn’t happen, I actually find it generative—that moment of confusion is interesting. I have a short story in [Electric Arches] called “The Device,” and I was gonna write that as a poem. It’s a short story about black people crowdsourcing the construction of a device that allows you to speak to your ancestors. And when I started writing it, I was like, “this doesn’t want to be a poem, it wants to be a short story, which sucks because I’m not good at writing fiction.” But it was clear that that was how it wanted to manifest itself.

And so I worked on it, and it turns out that I am good at writing fiction when I have the right idea. Which is part of a broader lesson I learned about this book. I knew at a young age I wanted to be a writer, I was very into like, “I need to write a book.” There’s something in our culture where people are focused on the accomplishment and not the actual art or the idea. There have been lots of times when I wanted to write a book, but I actually didn’t have a good, cohesive idea. I had no business writing anything, because I didn’t have a good idea. And I’m really grateful that my first book is one that actually represents some clarity of idea, a clarity of concept. A lot of my preconceptions about myself and what I’m good at are actually based on me trying to do the right thing at the wrong time.

Learn more at the Creative Independent.